Taste Festival History

Since Brand Events launched Taste of London in the summer of 2004, Taste Festivals have become a rapidly growing global event brand. Over the last 6 years the event has cemented itself as part of London’s summer season, becoming the premier restaurant event in the UK and setting the pace for a host of Taste Festivals in other “foodie” capitals of the world.

September 2004: The first Taste of London event took place at Somerset House. 26 restaurants and 14,000 people enjoyed the experience.

June 2005: Taste of London moved to Regent’s Park with 36 restaurants attracting 24,000 visitors.

June/July 2006: Taste of Birmingham and Taste of Dublin were launched – both were successful and proved that the concept could be taken to cities that have a thriving restaurant scene. Taste of London by now had grown to 42 restaurants and 34,000 visitors.

August 2006: 50% of the UK Taste Festivals was sold to Channel 4 who promoted the events via their food related programmes and incorporated live event features from a their well known programmes, including the F-Word with Gordon Ramsay and The River Cottage, into the UK series of Taste festivals. The involvement of Channel 4 demonstrated the huge enthusiasm of mainstream media for the subject and format of the event.

June/July 2007: In 2007 The UK events attracted 130,000 visitors and ran as a series of five festivals held in Edinburgh, Dublin, London, Bath and Birmingham respectively over consecutive weekends.

September 2007: The Taste concept spreads its wings internationally and Taste of Jo’burg enjoyed a successful launch in South Africa

2008: Saw Taste Festivals launch in cities such as Dubai, Cape Town, Sydney and Melbourne

2009: The brand continues to go from strength to strength. Taste of London attracted 50,000 visitors, Taste of Auckland launched in New Zealand and Taste of Amsterdam paves the way for more Taste events in Europe in 2010.